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05 Mar 2011, 10:49

Paul, I read your HBS and CBS guides, which impressed me with your acumen and clarity. Your website recommends talking to multiple consultants prior to a full engagement, which is the process I'm going through now. I would greatly appreciate any time you can find to share your thoughts on my profile.

The highlights reel:

1440 on the SAT in 2000. Hungover.

Enrolled at UMD in CS in 2002. Hated first semester and dropped out.

Played and recorded in rock bands.

Founded a successful Open Source Software project, with international users and collaborators.

Decided that starving for your art is overrated. Enrolled at UMBC in CS in 2004.

Still bored. Spent another 2 weeks in San Carlos de Bariloche. Loved it.

Still bored. Went to Israel for a couple weeks. Loved it.

Still bored. Left management position for a pure engineering position on a cool sounding project.

Absolutely hated new job. Realized that I wanted to make business decisions, not technical ones.

Won a local programming competition.

Went back to old company as a senior consultant. Make 60 bucks an hour now.

Got a 770 on a practice CAT. Want to do management consulting after b-school, preferably international. Would love to work on a variety problems, for a variety of businesses, in a variety of locations. I'm thinking Kellogg, Wharton, or Booth, followed by McKinsey, Bain, or BCG.

Post-consulting, I want to start my own business, built around fulfilling a need identified during my time consulting.

Miss being a bouncer. Got into MMA. Gonna do an amateur fight in 6 months.

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Thanks for reaching out. I think if you can get a score even close to what you are describing, you can charge full speed ahead. The key - and this is a big one - is pulling from your very background to showcase how different you are from all the other applicants who want to go from making technical decisions to business decisions. It's a common loop cycle and you are going to want to show that A) you are a different person from all those other candidates (just as a way to stand out and showcase fit with the school), and B) that you have transferable skills and experiences that pre-qualify you to make the transition. I have long said that when your pre-to-post MBA climb goes straight up through corporate hierarchy or industry norms, you can focus on articulating what you still *need* from a program. But when you swinging over to a new side of the desk, you want to show that you already have everything you need to wow recruiters ... and that all you are basically asking of the business school is that they polish you, give you pedigree, access to a network, and the chance to sit down with those recruiters. In other words, you want to approach this with almost a "I could probably do this without b-school, but an MBA is the ideal way" attitude. It's a fine line, of course, because you don't want to be dismissive and you do want to showcase passion and school fit, but it's really important to look self-sufficient and incredibly competent/confident.

You will also want to be sure to use all the cool soul searching, traveling, hobbies, and personality you have on display here, without seeming unfocused.

These are all things I can help with, of course, if you are interested. PM me or email mba@amerasiaconsulting.com if you want to set up an initial consultation and get into it.